Friday, November 03, 2006

Cynthia is busy shopping at Costco with her two-year-old son and he's on the verge of a meltdown. As she wanders into the produce section, Cynthia spots an oversized bag of grapes and plops them into her cart. When she was a new mother, Cynthia would have hand washed the grapes in a colander and sprayed some fruit cleanser on them, but today at the monster supermarket, it's all about speed and efficiency - and keeping a kid from going ballistic. So, she grabs a grape and hands it to her toddler who of course, drops it on the floor that thousands of people have walked on in the past year. Her son's eyes start to well up and he's about to blow like a tea kettle, so what does Cynthia do? Use the five second rule of course. Pick the grape off the floor, pop it in her mouth to clean it off and gives it back to her son. Luckily, no one was looking so Cynthia thinks she's in the clear. That is, until her son drops a second grape on the floor and when she attempts to use the same procedure on the wayward grape, a female customer catches her in the act and gives her a look of disgust at what she's just witnessed. While racing out of the aisle to head on to the paper goods, Cynthia looks back at the woman and calls out, "Look lady, if giving my kid a dirty grape is the only way I'm going to get through Costco, then that's the way it has to be." Long live the five second rule!!!